1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing control apparatus, printing control method, and computer-readable storage medium such as a printer driver corresponding to a printing apparatus that performs printing using multiple colored toners such as cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, and special color toner such as that for adjusting glossiness.
2. Description of the Related Art
Color laser printers that handle special color toner also known as special toner such as red and blue, in addition to the CMYK (cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), black (K)) toners which have been used up to now, have been increasing in recent years. Further, color laser printers that handle special color toner/special toner that has no color, such as toner to output gloss on printed material (special color toner such as that for adjusting glossiness) called transparent toner (hereafter called clear toner) and white toner have also been used. By effectively using such toners, the user can generate printed material having high added value.
For example, a printing apparatus has been proposed which prints (allover coating or partial coating) a clear toner overlaid onto color printed material (all or a portion thereof).
An allover coating using the clear toner prints a clear toner on one face of a sheet following performing color printing, thereby providing a glossy feel as to the sheet overall as with a photograph. Also, a partial coat using clear toner prints clear toner printing partially onto a sheet following performing color printing, thereby providing wide uses such as partial gloss or partial decoration.
Optionally specifying the clear toner printing location via a printer driver from a general application in order to realize a partial coat using the clear toner described above is normally difficult. This is because the color space of a graphics engine of a normal operating system (OS) cannot specify a transparent object such as that which is printed with clear toner. That is to say, a drawing object for clear toner does not exist in the drawing data to be drawn from a normal graphics engine.
Accordingly, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-309685 describes as a method to specify clear ink printing locations, wherein a method is employed which uses clear ink only for image data of a portion specified as a range on a user interface of the printer driver. However, with this method, when specifying locations become many, specifying as a range on the user interface of the printer driver by the user has become time-consuming and complicated.
Also, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-309685 describes another specifying method wherein an optional color is specified on the user interface of the printer driver, and only the objects in the specified color are replaced by clear ink and drawn. However, with this method, clear toner printing cannot be performed by layering onto the portion printed with color toner. In other words, controls such as coating an orange-colored text with clear toner so as to form text having a metallic gloss cannot be performed.
Note that even if the clear toner is instructed to be layered over the color toner with a similar method, the clear toner printing image cannot exceed the range of drawing information for the color toners printed from the application. That is to say, clear toner printing cannot be specified with an independent image that is completely different from the color toner printing image.
Note that performing clear toner printing specifying with an independent image, using a dedicated application, may be considered, but an optional general application cannot be used, meaning that ease-of-use suffers.